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Unity 7, Compiz To Be Polished For Ubuntu 13.10

05-16-2013, 01:50 PM

Phoronix: Unity 7, Compiz To Be Polished For Ubuntu 13.10

As mentioned already this morning, the plan with Ubuntu 13.10 is to have an experimental Unity 8 desktop powered by Mir for those wishing to toy around with Canonical's next-generation work. The default, however, will be Unity 7 in an X.Org environment. Even so, the Unity 7 desktop along with the Compiz window manager will receive some refinements for the next Ubuntu release...

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It would be quite funny if the only usable Compiz/Unity version was its last release.

Agreed. There was/is multiple incredibly annoying compiz regressions in 13.04. 12.10's compiz was actually the closest to a usable release that I've used. I don't think I've ever used what I consider a "fully usable" version of compiz, there is always way to many bugs and unpredictable behavior. Compiz was always a glorified tech demo filled with a ton of hacks, it made absolutely no sense to implement unity as a compiz plugin, they really should have stayed with mutter which is much leaner and less buggy. There's a reason why both gnome and KDE decided to create their own window managers instead of using compiz.

What canonical really needed was foresight and planning with how they implement their desktop. Ubuntu's gnome/compiz/unity/nux spaghetti mess was just a poor, poor implementation that never really had a long-term chance. It looks like they are finally getting their act together with unity-next at least, the move the QT/QML is the most technically sound decision I've seen from canonical in a long time.

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It would be unrealistic that if they change to Unity 8+mir for 14.04 a LTS. It should be for 14.10. So Unity 7 + compiz have to work for another couple of years(lifespan of 14.04).

I hope somebody should bump the version of Compiz to 1 in 14.04 as a homage. Compize was the first time I saw how eye candies can enhance user experience. A new step for Desktop Linux.

I whole heartly agree. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS should be Unity 7+ in order to leave us 90% of non-techies a stable platform to use while the Mir/Unity 8+ is worked out. That would be 3 years of desktop support with a well tested Unity 7+ to use, which would be ideal.

Maybe they could release two versions of 14.04? One with the well tested Unity 7+ that we can use for th enext 3 years, and another one, say 14.05 with the Unity8/Mir base for people to cut thier teeth on. Split the user base between the versions.

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I whole heartly agree. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS should be Unity 7+ in order to leave us 90% of non-techies a stable platform to use while the Mir/Unity 8+ is worked out. That would be 3 years of desktop support with a well tested Unity 7+ to use, which would be ideal.

Maybe they could release two versions of 14.04? One with the well tested Unity 7+ that we can use for th enext 3 years, and another one, say 14.05 with the Unity8/Mir base for people to cut thier teeth on. Split the user base between the versions.

I am anticipating unity-next and mir because of how much of a buggy mess unity/compiz has been (and they've only just begun getting the current unity 7 to a usable state), but I do agree, introducing an entirely new platform in an LTS with so little testing spells trouble and I really hope thats not the approach they take.

Here's what I hope happens:

1. They finally bang unity 7 into usable shape in 13.10, so we finally have a unity release not filled with annoying bugs and regressions. Unity-next is offered a session (already confirmed), but is only an early preview and not supported.

2. for 14.04 they keep unity 7 most unchanged, and only work on bugfixes to make sure its solid and make this the best LTS in a long time. They continue to offer unity-next/mir as a session. This time it is "supported", but is not the default. It should be usable, but only intended for early adopters. All development related to new features and such happens for unity-next, while unity 7 receives bugfixes only.

3. Starting with 14.10 they can consider making unity-next the default and then they should be able to have it workable as the default on the next LTS.

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I am anticipating unity-next and mir because of how much of a buggy mess unity/compiz has been (and they've only just begun getting the current unity 7 to a usable state), but I do agree, introducing an entirely new platform in an LTS with so little testing spells trouble and I really hope thats not the approach they take.

Here's what I hope happens:

1. They finally bang unity 7 into usable shape in 13.10, so we finally have a unity release not filled with annoying bugs and regressions. Unity-next is offered a session (already confirmed), but is only an early preview and not supported.

2. for 14.04 they keep unity 7 most unchanged, and only work on bugfixes to make sure its solid and make this the best LTS in a long time. They continue to offer unity-next/mir as a session. This time it is "supported", but is not the default. It should be usable, but only intended for early adopters. All development related to new features and such happens for unity-next, while unity 7 receives bugfixes only.

3. Starting with 14.10 they can consider making unity-next the default and then they should be able to have it workable as the default on the next LTS.

+1

Maybe someone should write your proposal up really nicely and submit it to the ubuntu devs.

A tweak to this would be to make unity7 and unty8 as different installable desktops, that way the user could decide which they want to run, the old and tested or the sexy and buggy.

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I can't help but feel that compiz was much better before Unity co-opted its development. Emerald itself wasn't such a bad thing- integration was the only real issue, as compiz was never officially affiliated with any particular DE. As much as I love what we've got now, I'll be sad to see it die off. It looks like we'll have plenty of performant composited desktops in the new world of Wayland, though.

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I can't help but feel that compiz was much better before Unity co-opted its development. Emerald itself wasn't such a bad thing- integration was the only real issue, as compiz was never officially affiliated with any particular DE. As much as I love what we've got now, I'll be sad to see it die off. It looks like we'll have plenty of performant composited desktops in the new world of Wayland, though.

Compiz wasn't designed for the post-X11 world, so while its loss is sad (a friend showing me it in 2008 is why I started using linux), it really doesn't direction to go from this point on. It almost died before Ubuntu picked it up. It only had one active developer at that point..... So its death was drawn out, but is not surprising.

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Now, that Unity + Compiz is finally getting stable and fast it's gonna be killed. Mir will take years to reach the same level and current driver support makes it even worse.
My experience with 13.04 has been very good, moving windows around is finally smooth, and game performance is becoming at the level of Windows.
12.04 lts in that matter is terrible, lots of tearing and stuttering.